City Council - Regular Meeting

I can't do that.

All right, it is 630. We'll call the Monday, June 8th, 2026 City of Mayors City Council meeting to order. If you could please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

And with that, do we have any additions to the agenda tonight? No additions tonight, Mayor. And now I'll look for a motion to approve the agenda as presented.

Motion.

Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carries 5-0. And with that, we will move to public comments. If there's anyone who would like to discuss anything that's not on the agenda, please come forward. Seeing none, we'll close public comments and move to consent agenda. Is there anything on the consent agenda that needs to be pulled for further discussion? Hearing none, I'll look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Motion. Second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carries 5-0. And with that, we will move to consider adoption of resolution authorizing... the cable franchise application process pursuant to Minnesota Statutes Chapter 238 and setting a public hearing date. So with that, Nick, if you'd like to introduce our guests. from Comcast.

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to introduce Robert and Megan, representatives from Comcast. They had approached us in April about bringing a cable TV and internet service to the City of Mayor. They had just minted a franchise agreement with the City of Waconia, and they are looking to, as I mentioned, build out a network here to bring service. So we began talks with them. We had internal staff meetings with Comcast, and we've been working through that. But as part of this, in order to grant a franchise agreement for cable television, that's not necessarily for the internet side. We don't deal with that. That's regulated elsewhere. We just deal with the cable TV side of things. That is handled by Minnesota Statutes 238 for how that process takes place. So cable franchise agreements are done by ordinance, but 238 prescribes a bit of a lengthier process for us to go through by state statute. So before we get to that, though, I'll invite Megan or Robert to come up. They have a presentation they'd like to give to the city council on services offered and what the construction might look like.

Perfect. Thank you. Welcome.

All right. Thank you so much, Mayor Dodge, City Council members. Good evening. Thanks so much for the opportunity to be here tonight. My name is Robert Freeman. I'm Director of Government Affairs for Comcast in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I'm also joined by my colleague, Megan Shea, who's the other Director of Government Affairs. And she is here because I'm only four months on to the job. And so if we have any difficult questions, she's going to help me out. And we both office 45 minutes away in St. Paul. We really appreciate the chance to be here in Mayer and walk through who we are, what we're proposing, and how we approach working with cities. Comcast has been around for more than 60 years. We've built our business around long-term investment and local partnerships. Our goal here is simple. We want to be part of the Mayer community and not just a provider operating in it. In case you're wondering, I'm from England originally. So I'll just move to the next slide here. So at a high level, we're a technology and connectivity companies serving residents, businesses, and the public sector. Through Xfinity and Comcast Business, we provide broadband, mobile, and video services, as Nick said. What matters most for the cities is that we continue to invest in our network, so it keeps improving over time. We want speeds to increase, we want reliability to improve, we want new technology that we can layer in without having to rebuild from scratch. And for the city, this is about having infrastructure that will continue to evolve, along with the needs of your residents and businesses. So we'll go to the next previous slide. One up. this one. Yeah, thanks. So I'll keep this brief. This slide provides some context on kind of our national footprint. We're consistently invested in expanding and upgrading our network over time. That ongoing investment is what allows us to continue to deliver reliable service and continue improving performance. If you go to the Minnesota slide, the next slide, as you know, we already have a significant presence in Minnesota. And We serve over a million homes and businesses here in the state. We have a large statewide network. We've invested over a billion dollars in the last few years. We think that reflects long-term commitment to the state and to the communities we serve. And for City of Mayor, that means you're not starting from scratch. You're joining a network that already exists, is very reliable, is supported locally, and continues to expand. So just to kind of get down to the nuts and bolts of it, this slide kind of shows how we approach building in communities. We like to break the process down into kind of three phases to think about it. So pre-construction, construction, and connection. Before construction, we'll work closely with the city, utilities, and other stakeholders to make sure we're aligned on routes, permits, timing, During construction, we make sure we focus on minimizing disruption, maintaining safe work areas, being responsible to your concerns, and making sure that we're doing a good job communicating with residents. And then once construction is finished, obviously residents, businesses gain access to services, which is where the long-term value for the city comes in. And the most important piece, as I said, is communication. So we stay pretty closely coordinated with the city. Staff, they have our number and their email. We have an email address that's dedicated as well for questions from residents if they have issues. And then if you move to the next slide, you can see some examples. And we have some examples here I can hand out later too. But during construction, we'll alert residents to activity through things like yard signs, if that's something the city allows. Usually we have door hangers as well and other notifications. We tend to get the construction can impact daily routines, so we'll make sure that people know what to expect when the work's happening and make sure that we're connecting with city staff so we know if there's any dates where we shouldn't be doing anything like the mayor festival, which we have heard about before. We want to make sure communication is clear. We want to make sure that we're being consistent and we want to make sure we're keeping projects moving along smoothly. So I'll just close with this last slide. Again, here's our contact info. You know, the approach isn't just building infrastructure. We want to be part of the community long term. We're already looking at ways to be involved locally, including working on a sponsorship with Mayor Rising Festival, which is a great example of how we want to support the community and get our name out there as well and make sure people know that we're here and we're and our services are really important. We want to be a partner to your city, to your residents, to your businesses, and we're very grateful for your time tonight. So if you have any questions, Megan or I are happy to answer them. Perfect. Thank you.

Any questions? We'll open it up if anyone has anything.

So you said it's just the cable side of things right now? or everything cable and internet?

Well, we offer cable, wireless broadband, fiber broadband, and then mobile services too. So if people want to sign up for like cell phone through Comcast too.

Okay. So you would have all the services, but we have to go through the... state statue for the cable part.

Right. Okay.

So then, so we had a previous company. So do they put lines like on top of like, how does that work with? Is it fiber internet? Yes. So we'll have two fiber internet options in town. How does that work? Like with the infrastructure that's already there? How do you work around that?

So with any construction that happens, this or otherwise, they'll have to call in locates, which will identify where the existing utilities are already laid, and then they will have to find space within that existing right away to additionally lay their cable beside it, under it, however it may fit in there.

Okay, because right now, the current provider has these boxes and yards. So would there be possibly... another box like that in people's right-of-ways possibly?

You know what I'm talking about? Yes, and that's where when we get to more of the construction phase, that's where we may dictate, no, we want to see these UC styles where it's buried underneath the ground rather than a pedestal sitting above.

Yeah, these are like underground, but there's an access point.

Yep.

I just wouldn't want, if it was in my yard, like two of those because that's where the junction points are.

Mm-hmm. And that's common. Nobody wants a fire hydrant. Nobody wants a structure in their boulevard. But the point of a boulevard is to house that type of infrastructure.

No, I understand that. But if they already have one... That could be something we ask of Comcast. I don't have one, but if my neighbor has one, I think that'd be kind of mean to be like, you have to have another one now. Does that make sense? I'm coming from a resident standpoint.

No, I get it. Similarly, so in the area that I live in, I live on a corner, so I have like three or four, right? And I actually live in a space where Comcast doesn't provide, but I've got one for one provider, one for the other. So those sometimes happen because those are... Obvious access points, right? A corner or entering a neighborhood or some of those types of things. But we do try to work really closely with the city as to what aesthetically you like. Is it a vault? Is it a ped? What makes sense? Sometimes vaults tend to flood and freeze in Minnesota. So sometimes it's helpful to have a pedestal. It's easier to access, to fix, to address issues. And then where they get located. And a lot of times we work with the homeowner themselves. They're like, oh, can you just move it like a foot this way or a foot that way? Yeah, so that's why we want to make sure we're as communicative as possible with meetings, with the public works, with your city administrator, and then also having phone numbers that the homeowner can call. So if they are worried or seeing something marked that they have questions about, that you can contact our business partner as well as email us directly, and that'll come to Robert or I. So we'll know what's happening in the city. So it is inconvenient. It is hard. Sometimes there's some of those things, but we try to address them as much as possible.

Okay.

Thank you.

So does Comcast do the installation or does it get subbed out to a contractor?

It will be a contractor, a business partner who specializes in building. So similar to what we're doing like in Waconia or other places.

Is it a contract you can use quite often or not just some job off the street to take care of mayor?

And I find that 90% of our issues can be addressed with communication because nothing goes perfectly. But as soon as we know, we're then able to address it, which is why we want to make sure you've got Robert's phone number. You've got all those types of things because things do pop up. Something might happen unexpectedly or something's not going just the way we planned. And we want to know about them so we can address them right away.

And I assume you'll, once you're done, you'll be connecting homes throughout the entire year. I assume in the winter where you might have to put the cable on top of the ground to connect the house. Are you, what's your kind of timeframe or how, how quick do you get back to get those buried for the residents?

So we will, once everything's connected and people can start signing up for service, you can do drops and bury them underground up until November sometime, right? Depending on when the ground freezes and then they'll lay on top. And then by the first week in June, we usually try to make sure everything gets put back underground. But that's across our footprint. So we have thousands that we do in the springtime. Right.

right okay what's your timeline for here if everything goes as a plan like you'd start construction as your plan is like in the fall with completion probably taking a year because you've got different neighborhoods that you're doing yeah i think um you know like assuming that everything goes well with the city and permitting process so we'd like to be done by like next spring

But obviously, things can come up too. So we don't want to guarantee a time until we know what hurdles there might be. But we feel pretty confident working with the city that we can get it done as efficiently as we can.

And we will be connecting to the plant that we're building out of Laconia.

Okay, I was wondering where is it coming from? And are you coming down like 30 or 34?

I don't know that the plans have been done yet. We'll make sure to meet with Public Works and make sure that they are aware and folks as we complete that walkout and full design.

So will it be available for like all of Mayer or just like certain like zones?

So the plan is to build out the, usually when we come in and ask for a cable franchise, we're asking to build a city. Okay. Now different neighborhoods might be turned on at different times as we continue.

Okay. I mean, I do like that now people have two different fiber option lines for internet or, I mean, and cable's different. That's probably not as prevalent anymore as it has been in the past.

You know, it's so funny because different communities, you find different products are really, really popular. But once you lay the fiber on the ground, you have access to all of our products.

Good. Yeah, we're big believers in competition, so keep prices down.

And I know when Robert and his team were out last time, you know, there was a lot of conversation, obviously. the right reasons you want to get in and get out as as soon as you can to you know so we're not under construction for two years it seems to me and i know we talked about this a little bit our public works is just three people right you know it's gonna be hard for locates and maybe that becomes a timing thing if if we run into that and it's not meeting yours is there Thoughts of maybe you would contract that out to get someone in and do locates where we wouldn't do that? Or what's your plan for that?

We partner with cities in a variety of ways, depending on what they're comfortable with and what the needs are. So if we're moving at a pace and think that we can supplement it, we'll. We'll work with the city on what that might look like.

Yeah, because it would be hard for us to commit a person for the entire day doing locates, right, and lose a third of our staff for that. So I'm glad there's some thought.

I'll get into those details for sure.

Yeah, yeah, good.

And I know I think part of that discussion too was sometimes we can leave the conduit and then we'll pull the fiber later, right? So we'll try to take advantage of everything we can do.

Oh, sure, sure. And then lastly for me, not so much going from the right away to each individual home, but just laying the perimeter and laying all the, what's your restoration? I mean, are you quick on the restoration? How do you do it? Is it hydro seed if you have to, or what typically are you doing for restoration? And then where do you wash your hands and say, now the homeowner, what typically have you done?

Oh, gosh, that's a great question. Some of it we work with you on, right? Like what makes the most sense for yours? In some cities, there's very specific restoration requirements. Sometimes they're asking us to lay sod. At times, it doesn't make sense to lay sod. Hydro seed sometimes takes better. Our goal is to always meet the expectation of the homeowner, right? and and to be in very short order after we're there um so we'll we'll work with the city on what work looks best works best you know you can't lay seed at certain times of the year you don't want to lay sad at certain times of the year right right sometimes a hydro seed with a hay that's really what's going to take good we'll we'll want to make sure and i will say That's a lot of the comments that we get from residents is, hey, you're just through, or hey, you've opened up some space there. It's a multi-step process. We want to be in and out as quickly as possible, and we want restoration to be a short follow. So if something is sitting longer than it should, we want to hear about it. Good.

Oh, I appreciate that. And like I said, I think the communication is going to be the biggest piece of this, and we've learned some lessons from the previous one, and and are trying to get ahead of some of those things as that was new to us as a community. So I think the communication part is the biggest piece.

And I think that's been my experience too. When I come in after a town has maybe had somebody else come through, it's hard to find somebody. That's why we want to be as accessible as possible.

Yeah, perfect. No, good, good. Thank you. Any other questions? Nick, do you have anything you want to ask?

Just a couple extra notes. Bring up proposed what the anticipated timeline would be for this. So tonight we have Comcast here. They're requesting the franchise agreement. So according to statute 238, what we have to do is it's an open process for applications. When the statute was written, it was How it works now is very different from how this statute was written. Then this has to solicit an open process. So if there are other companies who want to bring in a cable franchise as well, they are invited to do so. And that's the structure of it. So we have to actually solicit that. So it's got to be published two weeks in the newspaper. And then we have to hold that application period open for 20 days. And then after that. we can begin the process of adopting the order. And so the franchise agreement is done by ordinance ultimately. We have to have a public hearing as part of that. And so the schedule there fits those timelines. This is the quickest schedule that we could have on it, barring having a special council meeting to try to quicken it, but I don't see the need to do that. So tonight we have June 8th, the 12th through the 2nd. That's going to be that 20-day period in posting. On July 13th, in the resolution you have in the packet, that's when it sets the public hearing for that. So we'd have the public hearing and then afterwards it would introduce the ordinance as we do for all of our ordinances. We'd publish it then on our website for public review. And then at the following meeting, on july 17th as long as all things are lining well then we would adopt the franchise agreement by ordinance on the staff side of things tim sullivan and i have been working with comcast back and forth on drafts part of this statute also says that if you have an existing franchise agreement it has to be similar in nature as far as benefit goes to both so The Jaguar franchise agreement really sets the template and the stage for how we negotiate with Comcast. We can't give them more or less favorable conditions than we have for Jaguar on a number of issues. So Tim, the city attorney, has been reviewing that. We have most of it knocked out. We're pretty much in final draft format. So when we get closer to these dates, then we'll be interested to see the ordinance, what the changes have been, what they're proposing, and we can go through it at that point. Perfect. Thank you.

Anything else? Nope.

And this is obviously nothing new to you for a timeline, right? What you probably expected.

So perfect.

Any last words? Anything else you want to say before?

I'm really grateful for your time this evening. Thanks on behalf of Megan and I and for Comcast. And we're excited to come to your community. Thank you. Perfect. I appreciate you guys coming in, both of you coming in.

It's nice to meet you, Megan. Good to see you again, Robert. And we look forward to getting together as we move forward with your team and working with our public works and moving forward with this. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mack. Thank you both.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. So with that, so we need to adopt the resolution, correct? Correct. Do you have the number by chance? I don't have it in front of me.

Resolution 2026-4.

All right, I'll look for a motion to approve, adopt resolution authorizing cable, the cable franchise application process pursuant to Minnesota statute chapter 238, set in public hearing dates, resolution 2026-4. Motion. Second.

Motion. Motion and a second.

Any further discussion? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye.

Both same sign.

Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. All right. With that, we will move to approval of agreement for municipal website services. Thank you, Mayor.

We have about two pieces of legislation and a third factor. We're coming to the end date of our current contract for our website services. So two pieces of legislation that are driving some of this as well. Minnesota Chapter 111 and federal DOJ Title II. For the Minnesota end of things, this requires a migration to a .dov domain by June 1st. 2026 unless you already have your dot gov domain then you get an extra timeline on that for implementation so we as city staff we applied for our dot gov domain handful of months ago we've received it everything is in order so now that we've got that our deadline gets pushed back on that but then we also have the ada requirements as well our current website is from a 2021 design and is not ada compliant according to law even though we have till 27 and 28 to do some of this stuff. Now that we're coming to the end of our contract with our current provider, now is the time to really take a look at it if we're going to make a switch because we're in prime position to do so. we took a look around our area to see what website services other cities were using and the two that we found the most prevalent was catalyst our current provider and then civic plus we scheduled demonstrations with both of those to look at the front end how it would look and the updated on the viewing side and then also see what they had on the back end side as far as design flexibility and those types of elements and after we got done looking at both of those we We talked and that the back end and even the front end of what we're looking at was better on the Civic Plus side than what we currently had or would get with Catalyst. There was just better functionality. The way you could design the website was a bit more fluid and flexible to give it a bit more flair to it. Nothing against Catalyst, but it was like designing a Word document on the back end. not as good as we were hoping. When we were looking at our traffic to our website, we noticed about a third of the visitors use the calendar. They take a look at that. A third go to our more document center, city council, parks, planning commission, city code, stuff like that. And then the rest was a mix of other things. So another driving factor when we saw that was, well, what are the calendar services like? Again, Civic Plus, much more user-friendly, much more well-designed than the Catalyst counterpart. We got pricing from both of those. Over a four-year period, Catalyst came to $20,280.72, whereas Civic Plus was $20,952.43. The big change between those two was the $850 setup charge that came with Civic Plus, because if we were to move to them, it would be going to them, there would be a setup, whereas Catalyst is existing, there wouldn't be a setup charge for that. Otherwise, they're relatively close. Catalyst had a yearly inflator of 6%, while Civic Plus had a yearly inflator of 5% on their pricing for their packages. Recommendation from city staff is to go ahead and recommend switching to Civic Plus. So we'll continue this catalyst until we got everything ready to go with Civic Plus. We'll move everything to the .gov domain with that. Email addresses will change with that as well. I've been working with Jimmy Brand, our IT staff. He's very well aware of this migration. So he's going to have everything ready to go on that end as well. We're currently paying about a little over $3,600 per year. So this represents about $1,000 are a little more increased than what we're doing now, but it brings us into compliance with everything, and I think we're getting a better product overall if we choose to go with Civic Plus. So with that, any questions I can field from the City Council?

Any questions? Apparently not, then I'll look for a motion To go with the recommendation of Civic Plus from the amount of $20,952.43. Motion second we have a motion in a second. Any further discussion? Will this make it a little, I don't know if easier is the right word. User-friendly? Yeah, well, I mean, for us to upload our own images instead of stock photos and images of around the community or the splash pad or the water tower or whatever it may be.

Yes, I'd say both those websites had those capabilities. You could upload those types of images, but I think with Civic Plus, there's more flexibility in how those get shown on the website, where they can get placed, and amongst other content.

I'm hoping we can focus on some of that and make it more of a mayor versus some of those stock images that we have. We kind of have a mix of both, and it just doesn't flow real great, I don't think.

And that's something we're going to definitely take a look at as we build the new site. Yeah, I appreciate that. There are things that are very antiquated about the way the old site is set up. And this gives us a chance to redesign and restructure. It's not just taking that and then into the new format. It's like starting fresh. Let's realign this to function better. That's wonderful.

Any other comments? So with that, thank you, Nick and staff, for digging into this and coming with a good recommendation. I appreciate that. Hearing nothing else, all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries 5-0. And that will take us to a quote for Storm Pond Sonars.

Thank you, Mayor. A year and a half ago, well, about two years ago or so, We brought up the project of having our pond sonar. We have a stormwater maintenance policy that says that if the capacity dips below 50% capacity, then we should be looking at dredging efforts. And that's a fantastic policy to have. But the next question was, how do we know when we hit that 50% capacity? And at the time we talked about having a company come in to do a sonar of the ponds to give us a look at what the current sediment levels are. We worked with that company, and the idea was that last fall they were going to come in and start doing some work. We got a price for it as well. Approved it. We had city staff had met with property owners to gain access to some of these ponds, get that all cleared up. And then the company then told us that, well, our workload changed, so we're not able to get at it. they were still going to do some. And then they came back and said, well, we're not going to be able to do any of them. It's like, well, okay. Then said, well, we back this spring to do that. Well, I came back this spring and they reevaluated it. And they mentioned that the scope of it wasn't what they thought they were was, which was interesting to me since we went all over that all over all of that and that they had under quote the project and they wouldn't be able to do unless they were to be able to renegotiate that. So at that point, I had had enough after a year and a half of this back and forth and trying to get this going. So at the time when we originally approved it, Bolton and Menk does have a service for doing these bathymetric surveys. We elected to go with TeamLab because they seem to have good process and the price was a bit lower than having Bolton and Menk do it. Now that we have experienced what that meant, looking to have Bolton and Menk do that work. What that involves is Bolton and Menk would go out, they're proposing to do roughly a third of the ponds for the initial phase, and not all the ponds will need to get done. If you look on the map that was included, we have 45 ponds, but there's a share of these which are really wetlands. And we would not do bathymetric surveys on wetlands because we wouldn't dredge wetlands. We would do those on the truly constructed storm ponds, which hold retention waters. And roughly, by looking at it, we could probably ax out maybe 12, 13 of those that are wetlands versus actual storm ponds. That would be a part of what we're looking at doing and then carving that up to take care of those. We had also, I also just talked with Phil this morning about perhaps we don't have to do every single one right away of those remaining. If we had ponds that were constructed in a similar timeframe around similar years, you maybe do one of those to get an idea of what the others in the area might also be. Then maybe, you know, five years later, when we come back to do another survey to see how those had filled up over the last five years, you do one of the other ponds. to get a reading on that. This will help price control and spread it out over time on things of that nature. So they had proposed to do that work. I talked with Mike here this morning about it a bit more, and we had a very good discussion about this. And some of the things that we had brought up with doing a more of a, not a true delineation, but delineating between wetlands and storm ponds, that still needs yet to be done. And then reducing the scope of work to do a sampling rather than a full survey here that we're talking about. The recommendation Mike and I are thinking of is we'll like to send this back down to the Public Works Committee, do a little bit more work on it and polish it up before we bring it back up for a true approval from City Council. That way we can get a better map on it, delineate that more and get a better scope of work and a pricing on that.

Yeah, and do a nice revisit to it. Like I said, it was a year and a half, two years ago when we were first working on this whole thing, and the plan was to do every one of them, get a good baseline. Obviously, pricing has changed, and that's why we want to get a better plan, not a better. Maybe some more options for us to look at and kind of vet through some of this data again, make sure we're bringing a good recommendation up. Because as we've talked, this is just one piece of it. Once we get in there, if we find some that are over the 50% and we have to start dredging, I mean, we're getting into a lot of money then to start repairing, getting these back to where they need to be. Some $50,000, $100,000, it could easily be. So we want to make sure we have a good plan and we're getting what we need together. Because this is... this is going to be the cheaper part of the project if if we run into um where they've really filled up so phil do you have anything you want to add from your end no i i think you you mean

Hold it on the head.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it makes sense for Bolton and Menk to do this now, and I'm glad we kind of took that direction on it now. They help design all these. They really have a lot of input on it. They have a lot of the data on it. So it really makes sense as they're going through it. A lot of it's right there at their office too, so I think it's going to be beneficial.

Yeah, we've got all the records.

Right. Yep. So I think that'll be good. So any other questions on that? And comments or concerns if we do take this back to Public Works and vet through this. I think it's worth doing that. So with that, do we need a motion to take or just table it or can we just table? I think we just table, yes. We can just table it. So we'll just table this then and there'll be more to come here in the future. Perfect, thank you. With that, we'll move to City Council reports. Council Member Helt, anything to report on?

AND HAD A PERSONNEL COMMITTEE MEETING, JUST ONGOING UNION NEGOTIATION.

COUNCILMEMBER FAUCH?

I DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING.

COUNCILMEMBER JACKSON?

MEETING TOMORROW.

AND YOU HAD A PREVIOUS ONE. You must have had one after our last meeting or no?

It was very, very short. It was before. Yeah, because we did clean up on the trail. And I think we only discussed one itty bitty thing.

Perfect. Thank you. Council Member McNeely?

Nope.

And I only had the same meeting that Chad was in. We had our initial sit down with the union and the collective bargaining unit. I think it went really well. They're great to work with. We've met the new person who will be taking over for the city of mayor. So that was nice to put a name to a face. And we just want to get a little more, we're getting a little more information on some of the other communities and cities, and we just need to vet our data to their data and where it was coming from. So Nick had a meeting with them last Thursday to kind of get a good idea where they were coming from. So we'll be meeting again before too long. We're waiting on a couple other communities for some of their information. Some more to come on that. Go ahead, Nick.

Yeah, one item I just will bring up. Wednesday this week, the splash pad will be closed for the day. The fencing contractor will be coming in and putting that up. I met with them this afternoon to go over final spots with them. So we should be all good to go. And then benches for the splash pad should be arriving tomorrow. So she'll come together on Wednesday. Perfect.

Thank you. All right. With that, then I'll look for a motion to adjourn.

Motion second.

Motion second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposing sign. We are adjourned. Thank you. With that, we will, if anyone needs a break, then we'll move right into the workshop and call that to order and start with discussion on trails and sidewalks plan.

Thank you, Mayor. This is something we wanted to bring back up because I don't think we ever had really final definitive answers on what we want to do with this portion of the project. So we had done a sidewalk and trail implementation plan, and that has been out and we identified areas, namely in Coldwater Crossing and in Hidden Creek. Those are the areas marked down here where we have existing trail that is in need of replacement. And one of the options we looked at right now, we currently have a six foot asphalt trail and option A was a five foot sidewalk of concrete or option B was an eight foot trail. of asphalt. We had gone back and forth on the pros and cons. Concrete, while more expensive up front, tends to last about 50 years, whereas asphalt is a cheaper price, but you'll get about 20, 25 years out of it with maintenance. So this got brought about because Bolton and Menk were talking to me about having us go for safe routes to school. grant i was talking about that with mike and the safe routes to school grant would be more targeted at some of the newer additions we're looking at here so four one in this area and then um as we got talk it's like no the priority from city council like those areas would be good over time however the existing trails are where we really need to focus in on And that's where we got on the topic of, did we really choose asphalt versus concrete? So I wanted to bring it back up to city council to make sure we get definitive guidance on that.

Phil? Favorite conversation, right?

I wasn't here when it was discussed, so I'm about to join in on the fun.

Well, I think fun for you guys.

And Phil, if you have anything to add, feel free to jump in.

Yeah, I'll see how the conversation gets steered. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and as we know, we've been kind of, you know, obviously our trails need to get, they need, and repair, and we've been kind of kicking the can down the road a little bit, partly for some of this discussion. I mean, there's a significant cost difference between them. But again, you know, concrete, you're not...

seal coating and doing and get more out of it so and everything's going to concrete now so do we want to match up with the other stuff so like field stone is all concrete it's very nice it's clean yeah um now even if we redid the asphalt there are several driveways that are do those have to be repaired if you do concrete or asphalt not repair but like level you know because it all because it has to be ada compliant right so any project you really do on a trail segment you really need to clean up through the driveway so it doesn't matter if it's an asphalt or concrete that we do we're cleaning it up so technically we need to go ada approved and some of these areas may need additional work because they're not ADA approved now.

Correct. And you can do, I don't know if that was your question, you can do it in asphalt or concrete.

Right, but either way we have to do it. If we're going to be redoing these trails.

I would highly suggest that you open yourself up to lawsuits later on.

Well, that's what I don't want.

So, highly recommend.

And do we have a good map? Because we had so many discussions, I thought, didn't we walk the trails and get a good idea of where our worst, where the... Yes, there has been. We've done that a couple times, I feel. Correct.

Yep, Greg and I went through and did that. And there were multiple segments where there's a lot of cracking. A lot of it has been crack-filled, but then you're getting expansion of joints once again, and they're getting to the point where they're separating so much that... crack filling for another time it's a band-aid on what really needs to happen out there didn't see a ton of heaving disjointedness in elevation some but less than i was expecting greg and i went out and we rolled it um but there's just a lot of crack a lot of cracks wide cracks in there that tends to be the issue with a lot of that and they're getting to be so wide that crack filling those

It's not, it's not everywhere. It's just some key spots are really bad.

Mm-hmm.

Where it's, they're a trip hazard, especially, like, coming into cold water, the first entrance, that section's bad. But that's also, I think, due to, like, trees and roots, like, what's happening, you know.

Or by cases.

Yeah, that's happening by cases.

Mm-hmm.

And then there's a couple other spots on the other side of Coldwater that the route I walk is pretty. It's not great.

And either. Whichever option we go with asphalt concrete, we only go up to driveway stop, then carry out, go and then carry on again, right? We skip all driveways. No, we would go through driveways.

That's what she was just talking about.

Well, and also there's some elevation, like there's some changes. Some will just be probably simple, but others, like you're walking like this on the trail, like on their driveway, because it's not flat.

And I missed that part. I thought you were just talking about those kinds of things versus how it looks.

Oh, yeah. So if you do concrete, you'd be ripping up driveways and...

THROUGH THE CONCRETE ONES. IT CAN ADD UP REALLY QUICK. IF IT IS THAT NOT ADA COMPLIANT AND YOU'RE WALKING ON A SLOPE THIS, THEN YOU HAVE TO CHANGE THAT ELEVATION HAS TO CHANGE SO YOU GOT TO CATCH IT CLOSER UP TO THE DRIVEWAY. SO YOU'RE JUST EXTENDING THOSE LIMITS TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT MAYBE IN A GARAGE. that part starts changing things yeah yeah it sounds like asphalt's a much better yeah for both yeah it's about the same but concrete you know it's more expensive than the asphalt is that's why i'm saying it sort of kind of snowballed really quick because if you have to increase the limits that concrete just really adds up well and going from is

going from six foot to five foot.

Yeah, you gotta fill that in, right?

Is that a huge...

I don't even think some of our sidewalks are... I don't know what... They might not even be six foot.

I think the city standard is five foot.

City standards. So in your Fieldstone, the new additions of cold water and the newer additions of Hidden Creek that have gone in, those are five foot concrete sidewalks are in those areas. Or we have the existing trail. Is it a true six foot? Probably not anymore because you've had fill in an overgrowth that happens over time. So they're probably at five and a half, five and three quarters. Okay.

I'm just wondering if it was like going to be a big, you know, if we did go with concrete, if dropping a foot off is going to be a big...

But that's another good point. The new part of Hidden Creek is all concrete.

Yep.

Yeah, aesthetically. Aesthetically, concrete's the way to go.

Right.

Because then... Well, and long-term.

And longevity. Yes.

And you can just chunk out sections and replace it fairly. Like our guys could almost mix a bucket of cement and fill in a section of concrete.

You don't deal with cracking nearly as badly over time. And like you said, if there's a bad panel, you cut, cut, pop her out. and replace it. You don't have to do seal coating.

Right. I'm leaning more towards concrete even though...

If we're going to do it right, I think we do concrete. But we really have to prioritize the sections.

I would say to your point, we've got to understand if there's any street recons coming too. Just do a standalone project if you have this bigger project. I don't think any really are up for a recon anytime soon, but it's just we want to be smart about it, right?

I think it's some sections of cold water that in 2030 will be up for a mill and overlay. We're not in reconstruction area for quite some time, but a mill and overlay

And you could package it with that. You'll get economy of scale with the general contractor who can rip it out pretty quick. And then the concrete guy comes in and does that. So it's something to think about

Because in some of those areas you're going to be pulling up curb around storm sewers or just ones that have busted up and you're going to be replacing that anyway. So you're going to have concrete contractors as part of the project regardless. Now you're just adding more flat work, which for a concrete company, flat work is going to be the easy part.

Well, I feel like we kind of have to pick an area where we feel is the worst and then that's where we start. And we have to figure out an estimate of what it's going to cost for that section and looking at the driveways and the slope. And I think the other thing was, what was our ordinance? Like for paying, I'm against charging homeowners 50%.

We did change that. So the previous special assessment policy, I think, slated 25 or 50% of sidewalk reconstruction towards the abutting property owner.

I don't want to do that.

And we did change that. So it's 100% city cost.

Yeah, because everybody's using it and not everybody has a sidewalk.

Right.

And so how is it fair if you just happen to buy a home with a sidewalk? but everybody's using it because a lot of our streets only have a sidewalk on one side.

Or only half the neighborhood.

Or half the neighborhood.

Yeah, because we don't even have it on one side.

And we did talk about adding new segments. One was like Birch, and I think we did some sort of thing, and it was like, no, we're not doing that.

Birch said no.

Correct. A lot of the homeowners. I would love to have a sidewalk there. I think that there was a big miss when the neighborhoods were built on where there were no sidewalks.

But I don't...

I just want to redo what we already have, which you can still get around every street safely.

Mm-hmm.

And that was kind of our conversations. We've got to replace the ones we have versus going out and doing new ones and carrying on. We can't forget about what we have that's being repaired. Go ahead, Phil.

So as far as the maintenance, for the ones that are asphalt, is it the property owner or the city doesn't go and plow?

No.

I would prefer it to be concrete versus asphalt, especially with the age and how it deteriorates. running a shovel on there isn't always the funnest, but that's one way to consider the maintenance aspects of the employer.

I think from a finance standpoint, just to recap on that, we used to put money into the public works building project. When that completed, we reallocated those funds for trails and sidewalks. So we have $125,000 we've been allotting since 2024. So we're in our third year of that. We had a little excess there that we dumped in there. So how this can work into the future. So we have the funds building up in there. The idea being we're looking for grants, applying for grants to help do for the reconstruction portion of this. If we could, we can still do projects with the fund balance, get the worst of the worst while still applying for grants. But what this can turn into into the future is if we do happen to get a grant and it's going to be millions of dollars to do all of it. we can convert this CIP into a debt service payment. So we can take, you know, maybe leave a little bit in there just for the future, but we can take a great chunk of that instead of 125, maybe it's 110, and turn that into a debt service payment that can go towards the other half of that match or whatever the match has to be that we have to put towards it if we don't have that built up enough already. And that way we're not really having a detriment to the levy. It's trading it out. Now that we've got it, we're going to go, it's going to get replaced, swapping that out for that potential option in there. But until we get that grant, we will have money that we'll keep putting in and that can go towards reconstructing those worst of the worst segments.

But I would like, I mean, I feel like we have been talking about this for like three years.

we have.

You know, like when we started putting money aside, knowing this is a project, but some of the worst of the worst is getting pretty bad. And I just, it's just a safety thing. You know, like if you're walking when it's dark, you know, and it's an asphalt, like you don't see these, you know, I'm very impressed with how we've maintained our streets and sidewalks, but I feel like our sidewalks now are on that back end of needing help.

I agree. Agreed.

So I don't know if we walk it, you and Greg walk, so I think you have to just maybe find sections that need it the worst and then start looking at, like, I don't even know how you go and look at the driveways and figure out, like, what needs to be done.

Yeah, you need to get a survey and sort of make sure you can get, you know, a 3D model of it so then you can see how it works.

And then you work directly with those homeowners where because not every home will have an issue, but I already know there's a couple. There's definitely going to be some that are going to have some changes.

Yeah, we just did this in a different community and we have to send out letters and have a discussion with them and know a lot of them we we were able to take to the right away and not go on private property but then they said well my driveway's asphalt it's a piece of garbage let's can we just sort of kind of we'll pitch in and then you know we can get the whole driveway done at that point so it's a benefit it can be a benefit okay so you can work with homeowners if and say okay well the concrete company is already here here's your part how does that bill out do they just Yeah, it gets a little sloppy on on on city staff side on how we. Code it and everything like that, but I mean it is an option.

It is if somebody does need to replace their driveway and wants to make that change, correct?

It's doable.

Yeah, because when we did forestry, people did larger sections, smaller sections.

Yeah, pretty consistent, I think, what we've done in the past with homeowners, not big construction like that. Yeah, if they can benefit from it, why not?

So we agree concrete?

I think that's what we should do, and some of you might not have seen numbers. We did have some comparison numbers at one point, and it's a big difference. Oh, yeah. and what it is. So if you want any other information for now, reach out to Nick or Phil, we can get whatever. I think maybe we bring this to our next public works and start having some of these discussions, not as long as we're going to have to meet anyways on the sonar.

So now question, just one more question. We're strictly talking sidewalks here, not trails going to come. Correct.

there's a time and place for a trail right and there's a time for a sidewalk right right but no the main discussion is sidewalks if it turns into a trail a butts right up where some sidewalks are and we want to throw it i mean well but the intent is sidewalks for now is the main intent of it yeah yep but no, not going through and doing all our trails through parks or anything like that, no.

Okay, I was going to say, because that's a good excuse.

Maybe line up the ones that are entrances and exits out of the developments and those, you know, maybe throw some of them, but, you know, parks are not in there trail-wise is not the intent now. So, yeah, we can start having some discussion, but I think concrete's the way to go now until we get some numbers together and... It just changes everything.

Well, yeah, because like the new part of Hidden Creek is concrete. I think that section in Coldwater, that back end, that's concrete. So, I mean. And it's such a difference between the old part of the Coldwater and the new part. See, that's all.

Yeah, you can see in the 7th edition here, it switched to concrete. You can see. And then in the 8th edition.

Yeah, it's concrete. So, I mean, I think that answers the question already.

I mean, concrete is... We made the decision somewhere to switch it over. We need to go back then.

And here's where it's switched in Hidden Creek on the south side.

Yeah.

And see a lot of these...

They just put in concrete driveways, which I think looks so much nicer, too, for all those...

Yeah, I wouldn't mind a concrete driveway. I don't want a sidewalk, but. All right, anything else right now on that?

Nope. Good, Phil, you got anything else you want to add or? Nope, I'm Nick. Nope, I'm good. Seems like we have some direction and we'll take it public works.

Sounds good.

Spend some money.

We've been starting to save for it.

Like I said, it's been at least three years. It is getting to that point. We've got to make a decision. With that, we'll adjourn the workshop. Thank you, everyone. Have a great night.